"_Dear Miss McDonald_:—Since saying good-bye to you last June, and going off to the mountains and seaside, while you, like a good Samaritan, stayed in the hot city to look after ’your people,’ I have flitted hither and thither until at last I floated out to Cuylerville to visit Mrs. Guy Thornton, who is a friend and former schoolmate of mine. Here,—not in the house, but in town,—I have heard a story which surprised me not a little, and I now better understand that sad look I have so often seen on your face without at all suspecting the cause. "Dear friend, pardon me, won’t you, for the liberty I have taken since knowing your secret? You would, I am sure, if you only knew what a dear, darling little creature Mr. Thornton’s eldest child is. Did you know he had called her Daisy for you? He has, and with her blue eyes and bright auburn hair, she might pass for your very own, with the exception of her nose, which is decidedly _retrousse_. She is three years old, and the most precocious little witch you ever saw. What think you of her making up a bundle of shawls and aprons, and christening it _Miss Mac-Dolly_, her name for you, and talking to it as if it were really the famous and beautiful woman she fancies it to be? She is your ’sake-name,’ she says, and before I knew the facts of the case, I was greatly amused by her talk to the bundle of shawls which she reproached for never having sent her anything. When I asked Julia (that’s Mrs. Thornton) who Miss Mac-Dolly was, she merely answered, ’the lady for whom Daisy was named,’ and that was all I knew until the gossips enlightened me, when, without a word to any one, I resolved upon a liberty which I thought I could venture to take with you. I suggested the letter which I inclose, and which I wrote exactly as the words came from the little lady’s lips. Neither Mr. Thornton, nor his wife, know aught of the letter, nor will they unless you respond, for the child will keep her own counsel, I am well assured. "Again forgive me if I have done wrong, and believe me, as ever, "Yours, sincerely, "_Ella Barker_." ———— Daisy’s face was pale as ashes as she read Miss Barker’s letter, and then snatching up the other devoured its contents almost at a glance, while her breath came in panting gasps, and her heart seemed trying to burst through her throat. She could neither move nor cry out for a moment, but sat like one turned to stone, with a sense of suffocation oppressing her, and a horrible pain in her heart. She had thought the grave was closed, the old wound healed by time and silence, and now a little child had torn it open, and it was bleeding and throbbing again with a pang such as she had never felt before, while there crept over her such a feeling of desolation and loneliness, a want of something unpossessed, as few have ever experienced.